Posts Tagged ‘Chinese soft power’

“Per the first pair, any diminishment of China’s powerful economic influence in Australia – particularly in terms of commodity purchases, investments, real estate deals, and wealthy foreign students – could theoretically be replaced by the US or its allies, though not on the same qualitative level and not without self-inflicted damage to the island nation.”

This is an understatement: Australia is geared to exporting raw materials to the world’s foremost productive economy. The USA cannot replicate China’s role in this respect and, as for US allies, well, who are they? Merely assuming, as the latest national security doctrine does that India and Japan are US allies doesn’t mean that they are US allies. After all, is the UK, the country Trump refuses to visit, a US ally? Clearly, the Australian “security state” is biting back but can it trump Australia’s fundamental interests? Australia’s own little Brexit will likely be as ephemeral as Brexit itself.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has called for a three step peace process in order to put an end to the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, which has seen many refugees flee from Myanmar to neighbouring Bangladesh.

Like this:

“All in all, the US attempts to create friction in the South China Sea area by instigating the ASEAN countries are floundering. Equally, it signifies the continuing decline in the US influence on the ASEAN as a regional group.”

The 11th ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting at the Clark free port in Pampanga, Philippines, turns out to be Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s first exposure to ‘rising China’. In certain ways, it becomes a reality check, too.

Yesterday’s marathon speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping was not only a blueprint for China’s future, but for the future of the 21st century. Not only will all roads lead to China by century’s end, but in many ways, the new and most vibrant roads in the world already do.

Not since the British garrison at Singapore surrendered to Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita in 1942 has Western opinion of an Asian power changed so fast. When China’s 2015 stock market bubble popped, prevailing Western opinion held that China’s economic boom would flame out in a debt crisis comparable to America’s subprime disaster of 2008 or the near collapse of Europe’s southern tier in 2013.

Like this:

“Largely unreported by Western corporate media, what happened in Vladivostok is really ground-breaking. Moscow and Seoul agreed on a trilateral trade platform, crucially involving Pyongyang, to ultimately invest in connectivity between the whole Korean peninsula and the Russian Far East.”

The People’s Republic of China is preparing to carry through with plans to invest a massive US$30 billion in developing Haiti’s infrastructure, including power plants, sanitation works, water systems, railways, affordable housing, and marketplaces, in an agreement that is expected to have a major social, economic, and developmental impact.

While the recent raft of Sino-Saudi trade agreements benefited Chinese soft power in protecting Xinjiang, and the Saudis by diversifying their economy, China’s slow intertwining with Saudi Arabia complements the Sino-Russo alliance. Primarily, its benefits could lead to a realistic threat to the petrodollar.